


Dreams Like Ashes

by Captainkirkmccoy (faithintheboys)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Inception Fusion, Dreamsharing, Dubious Science, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Memories, Multi, Protective Team, Protective Tony Stark, Rescue Missions, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Worried Peter Parker
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-07
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2019-11-13 04:39:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18024863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faithintheboys/pseuds/Captainkirkmccoy
Summary: Tony Stark may not know the danger he's unleashing on himself, his team and his kid by reworking the old plans for the PASIV/Dream sharing project his father sold to the military, but he does have the best intentions. Irondad Big Bang.





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to all my fellow Irondad Big Bang writers, artists, and betas. Huge thank you to Kiranwearsscienceblues, JolinarJackson, Paige, and gorgeousgalatea. You are all amazing and have made me a better writer. And of course, we wouldn't have this challenge without parkrstark. Thank you for modding. 
> 
> Lots of Inception handwaving here. Apologies to Christopher Nolan.

_ 127, 382, 191… _

A tepid drop hit Peter’s cheek and he reached to brush it off and for a moment the world around him rushed in--the loud honking as a car swerves around a delivery truck, the loud shout as a group of kids his age try to leapfrog over each other. He heard a conversation in the building over too, a woman recounting the moment she dumped her girlfriend in a bus station in Croatia. 

_127, 382, 191, 574..._ He started again, taking a breath. Each iteration helped the noise around him fade away. 

The Collatz Conjecture--a deceptively simple number pattern where any odd number multiplied by three, plus one, and any even number divided by two in a sequence would always get to 1--he had learned from Tony Stark in the days when the world was mending itself together after Thanos was defeated, when waking up was like being in a movie theatre front row with the speakers turned to 11. Every whisper, footstep, movement, assaulted his ears and eyes so that he flinched like a firework had just gone off right next to him. 

Peter hasn't heard from Tony or the rest of the Avengers for a month, going on a month and three days and twelve hours. A quick check at his Starkphone--with its Iron Man case and cracked screen--reveals the text message chain he’s kept open, a permanent dialogue bubble open for when he finally thinks of how to respond. 

He’s rejected the obvious:  _ I’m sorry.  _

Because what is he sorry for? Sorry that he thought he had a place among the team after the snap? Sorry for believing that Tony cared for him after the few weeks of near constant attention his mentor gave him?

_ I’m sorry you’re an asshole sometimes.  _

_ I’m sorry you never actually learned to talk to people.  _

_ I’m sorry I was a burden.  _

A month and three days and twelve hours ago, Peter had jumped down from his perch and settled himself in a stool next to Tony. The other man was typing furiously at his holoscreen, pencil dangling from his mouth and eyes unwavering from the figures. 

“Can I help?” He asked and instantly regretted it. Not only because he sounded like a five-year-old begging for attention but because of the way Tony flinched, as if he didn’t even know he was there. 

“No can do, kiddo. Why don’t you see if Cap wants to start the new Star Trek movies.”

“You gonna come watch too?” Peter couldn’t take his eyes off the screen, trying to decipher any of what Tony was working on from this position. 

“In a bit. I’ll even make kettle-corn and won’t burn it like Bruce.”

But an hour or two later, when he’d paused the movie enough times when he thought he heard Tony emerge from the elevator to join them--he found Tony in his workshop, hand in his hair as he cursed and FRIDAY tried to soothe him. 

“I thought you were coming up?” Peter meant it to be a little bit petulant--sometimes Tony indulged him as a brat teenager, exasperated by the normalcy of it all. 

“Not now, Pete.”

“Do you need help?” Peter itched to be able to focus on something challenging. 

“Gotta give me a little space right now, okay?” Tony snapped and Peter swallowed. 

“Yeah. Fine. Sorry for bothering you.” He headed into his perch, pushing aside the beanbags and pillows and grabbed his bookbag, slinging it over his shoulder and heading out without another word. Tony didn’t stop him. 

He expected an apology, a peace offering through spider-man shaped pancakes courtesy of the press Clint had bought for the compound’s kitchen. He expected Tony to make a joke of it or mention it at all. 

He didn’t expect for Pepper to poke her head into the game room where he was half heartedly beating Sam in Nintendo 64.

“Sorry, Peter. Tony’s gonna be wrapped up in a few things for the rest of the weekend. Do you want to go into town with me? We could get lunch?”

Peter felt like he’d been punched in the gut. It reminded him of the early days when Happy wouldn’t answer his calls. He’d been brushed aside and Pepper, bless her, was trying to make up for it. 

“I’m good. Uh--is Happy around? Maybe he could drive me home?”

Sam paused the game. “You’re gonna abandon me now? I wanted at least a rematch?”

“You sure?” Pepper frowned, head tilted to the side, as if she expected Tony to come in and protest too. He didn’t. 

“Yeah. Ned and I were supposed to hang.” It was a lie. Everyone in the room knew, but that afternoon Happy drove him home, eyes on the rearview the entire time, trying to suss out Peter’s “problem.”

“You sick? May will kill me if you’re sick.”

“Not sick. Just tired.”

And wasn’t that always true? Especially now. 

He yawned again, pocketed his phone and went back to kicking his legs under the railing. 

He shouldn’t be hurt that he hasn't received any messages from the others either. The only way he knows he’s not completely forgotten is that Tony has been updating his suit remotely because Karen tells him about the upgrades whenever Peter asks. 

The suit, of course, was new. Because the other one disintegrated on Titan, and when he lay in bed at night and listened to the Queens traffic outside and the sound of May's cooking shows in the other room, he would feel his hand dissolve, the thickly woven fabric going first because being enhanced meant he didn’t get the quick easy fade out, he’d feel his body fight against the dust and fail. It reminded him of the dreams he used to have as a kid, his teeth falling out one by one, leaving his gums sore and empty. Too real.

He'd taken to clenching his hands too tightly into fists -- in the suit, out of the suit, in his sleep, so that when he woke up he was cramped and sore. 

But Karen could recognize the beginnings of a panic attack and her voice changed to a smooth tone that he'd recognized in the ASMR videos MJ watched, telling him to  _ breathe in  _ and  _ do you want me to call Mr. Stark or Aunt May or Ned _ ?

_ "You should rest, Peter." _ Karen interrupted his mental math. 

He blinked at a passing car's headlights -- too bright off of the drops of late summer rain that had just begun to fall. It would storm soon and the house would be hot and sticky; May would drag all the fans to suck the hot air out and circulate cool breezes. The super promised to have the air conditioning fixed a week ago and Peter wanted to track him down in his Spiderman suit and shout for a bit. 

"Maybe I'll just sit for a bit," he said, and rested his head against the cool side of the step, wondering if he could go get his hoodie upstairs--another present from Mr. Stark. It operated as a bonus Spider-suit, with a hood that comes down like one of those Ostrich pillows he'd seen in Penn Station.

A few minutes later and Karen's voice changed from the gentle tone to more forceful. 

_ "Peter, please wake up. Peter!" _

Peter blinked into Happy Hogan's exasperated face. "Thought you were dead for a sec." Happy's expression was all furrowed eyebrows and a pinched mouth like the sour thing he swallowed wasn't a lemon but the idea of dealing with an exhausted teenager. 

"I'm fine." He stretched and stood, blinking away Karen's reminders that he wasn’t. "What's up, Happy?"

"What's up?" Happy grumbled. "I drive all the way here to get you and all you have to say is ‘What’s up’?”

"Sorry." He blinked again as a raindrop hits his eyelid and wondered how long he'd been asleep out here. 

Happy frowned again and Peter could see that his usually impeccable suit was rumpled, his hair sticking up like he just rolled out of bed himself. 

"Are you okay?" Peter asked, jumping up. 

Happy looked away before he smoothed his features into a neutral expression. It looked more like a grimace. "Fine. Now let's go. We'll just miss weekend traffic if we hurry."

"Hurry, where?" Peter said, staying rooted to the steps. 

"You're needed at the compound. Let's go."

***

Happy’s eyes found his in the rearview mirror as they turned up the compound’s long drive. “You look beat.”

“You too.” Peter didn’t need enhanced senses to see the purple bruise-like circles under Happy’s eyes. His hands itched for something to do — a building to scale, a Rubik’s cube to twist, whatever would feel real and tactile. He’d already imagined every bad scenario that might bring him back up there after months of near radio silence and none of them were good.

“Don’t snark.” Happy said and slid out of the car. The child locks disengaged as he slammed the door behind him.

In front of them the compound loomed in a very different way than the Avengers Tower did in New York. Where the Avengers compound was showy, a trophy piece among the Skyline, the compound was a solid, steady presence. Peter’s heart still leapt at the sight of it and he still got goosebumps up and down his arms that had nothing to do with his spidey senses. 

“What are we doing here?” he asked, jogging to keep up with Happy’s long quick strides up the steps.

Happy didn’t say anything, keying in his code at the scanner and then offering his palm. He motioned Peter to do the same.

“This is different,” Peter murmured as the scanner flashed green and the door clicked open.

“Yeah, well.” Happy pushed open the door, reaching behind to usher Peter through. 

The  _ a lot is different  _ remained unspoken, but Peter could practically hear it echoing behind him. Happy hadn’t turned to dust; but he’d been on lockdown with Pepper at the compound, which might have been worse. Forced to watch as colleagues dissolved in front of him, while SHIELD agents tried to keep their composure, never having trained for something like this before. 

Happy was the one who’d brought Aunt May to the compound, who’d set her up in Peter’s quarters, held her as Tony landed on the grass outside the compound in a ship he’d put back together with Nebula. Tony had managed to give a slight shake of his head before collapsing, as if knowing exactly what she would ask.

“Happy.” Peter stopped in the atrium, staring at the same logo he first saw two years ago when he declined Tony’s offer to be an Avenger. He could almost hear the echo of Tony from way back then:  _ I think with a little more mentoring… _

“Hm?” The echo of the older man’s shoes halted as he turned around.  

“Thanks.”

“For what, kid?”

“Just, thanks.”

Happy gave a little huff and then kept walking. 

Peter also couldn’t forget the way Happy grabbed on to him when he first woke up after the snap, a large hand cupping the back of his neck gently before both hands briefly shook his shoulders.  _ “Jesus Christ. Don’t do that again, kid,”  _ Happy had breathed out, so soft that Peter knew Happy would’ve denied speaking if pressed.

_ “Give the kid some room, Hap, _ ” Tony had said, all carefree smiles and swagger but Peter’s extra sense had noticed the way Tony’s heart was hammering behind his nanotech and that he was working extra hard to breathe normally.

That was three months ago in the medbay of this facility. The same facility was devoid of life now. 

Peter swallowed hard, still exhausted, realizing he would be glad to sit anywhere on the pristine floor and just fall asleep, but followed Happy down a corridor known as the A Wing.

The last time Peter had seen all of the Avengers in a group was a debriefing meeting a week after he’d woken up, two weeks after Thanos turned to dust.

He’d had a head bandage that he couldn’t stop poking at (Wanda had threatened to pin his hands to his sides if he didn’t stop) and an inability to stay still--turns out his new metabolism didn’t react well to painkillers. They sped through his metabolism so fast he ended up higher than a kite, though more sugar rush drugged than loopy drugged, climbing the walls like a kid who’d just eaten a bagful of pixie sticks. Tony had pulled him down at some point, like a dad reaching for a child’s balloon that was floating away.

The air had been thick with hopeful acquiescence. No one seemed to have the fight left in them to go at it among themselves—though lines were still drawn. Bucky Barnes stood in the corner with his arms crossed the entire time, grunting when necessary. Tony didn’t look Captain America in the eyes and Cap didn’t acknowledge him in turn. Other than that, everyone seemed dumbstruck that they had made it back from hell and survived. Even Natasha, who always seemed like nothing could faze her, looked troubled.

This time, the room was muted, dulled with everyone hunched over and defeated. Peter’s first thought was of the way people sat at his Uncle Ben’s wake—students, fellow professors, friends all gathered around like sagging flowers with broken stems.

“Who died?” Peter rasped, stuck in the doorway to the large conference room that has become the requisite meeting place for Avengers business. It was soundproofed and in the exclusive area of the compound only accessible with level 4 clearance or higher. All Avengers, including Peter, had level 6 access. He glared at Happy, who had taken his usual place at the far corner, leveling off against Bucky’s spot on the opposite side. The two had a better rapport now than they did two months ago but it wouldn’t be an Avengers meeting if they didn’t glare at the other.

“Why didn’t you tell me someone died?” Peter’s mouth went dry as he thought of Happy’s disheveled look and his non-committal responses. 

“Oh, Peter.” Pepper stood up from the head of the boardroom table, smoothing down a grey skirt with shaky hands. Her mouth struggled through degrees of her usually calm and comforting smile, the wry way she dealt with her fiance. It was a struggle to keep her expression smooth now. “No one died.”

“I don’t believe you.” Peter took a head count of everyone in the room and came up short. His stomach churned, threatening to upheave the deli hero sandwich he had earlier. His exhaustion from minutes ago evaporated. “Where’s Tony?”

“Good question, Parker.” A man strode into the room, a black duster jacket swirling around him like an ‘80s vampire movie. Peter knew from the eye-patch that this was Nick Fury. Tony always used to spit out the name like it was a swear word he never got tired of saying.

Fury hefted a dented metal case up on the table. Peter thought it looked like a prop from a Spy movie, then remembered who he was dealing with. 

“This,” the former director of SHIELD said, making sure his eye met everyone seated at the table and around the room. “Is a PASIV. Stands for a  Portable Automated Somnacin IntraVenous Device. Makes it possible to share dreams—get in people’s heads. Steal or leave something behind.”

Natasha cursed, closing her eyes briefly in that way she did when she knew someone had done something she’d pay in blood for.

“Like what? A memory?” Bruce asked from the corner. 

“Or an idea,” Fury agreed.

“That sounds reckless,” Steve said.

“Which is why Howard Stark invented it during the war. The project was abandoned in the ‘70s but by then it was too late. The tech spread among some less reputable groups and dreamsharing became a criminal enterprise,” Fury explained.

“What’s it doing here?” Sam asked, peering down on it like it was a pulled grenade.

“We believe Stark began tinkering with it after your return.” 

Pepper cleared her throat. “I found him hooked up to the device three days ago. He’s been unresponsive since.”

Peter remembered the way Pepper pulled him into a hug one night after he made his way up to his room from one of the labs with Tony. He’d been barely able to keep his eyes open and all he could think of was face planting on the soft bed in his quarters. She squeezed him gently before going off with Tony, who looked equally as tired and ready to sleep -- a first for a long while, Peter was sure. 

“He’s alive. He’s just…stuck,” Pepper said gently to Peter.

“Can’t you just unhook him?” Peter wondered if he could make it through the maze of the compound to find Tony before the team noticed. Was he in the medbay or in a private room?

“It’s not that simple, Pete.” Rhodes spoke up from his place at the table, where he too had been staring down at the case like it was a loaded weapon. 

“Time in a dream is distorted, as you all know. You cycle through dreams every night, feeling like you were in them for hours. An hour or so hooked up to a PASIV could mean a half a day in a dream and the dreamer usually sets a limit, provides a kick for themselves to wake up. Stark’s PASIV is either faulty or—“

Peter bounced from foot to foot. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it? Then what are we doing here? There must be someone who knows how to work this thing, right?”

“We tried. No one could get that far,” Pepper said. 

“Dreamers have the ability to militarize their dreams. Howard was a paranoid bastard who would have insisted that Tony have the training and protection so no one could attack him. Our men didn’t last a minute.”

“How many layers do we think he’s in?” Clint asked, suddenly. All eyes turned to him. 

“You know about dream sharing?” Wanda asked, one eyebrow raised in question.

“A bit.” He shrugged.

“Can’t know for sure. More than two,” Fury answered him.

Clint reached over, flips open the case. “You want us to go in, right? Chances are he’ll recognize us better than the SHIELD grunts.”

Natasha muttered something in Russian. 

“It won’t be easy,” Fury said.

“I’m in,” Peter said.

“No.” Several voices echoed around the room and Peter can’t help but feel annoyed yet touched at their reaction. 

“The kid goes in,” Fury said, packing up the case and swinging it off the table. In more peaceful times, his tone would have brooked no argument. But that was before the Civil War, the snap, defeating Thanos with a broken team.

“Sir-” Rhodey started.

“Nick…” He heard Natasha begin. 

“Tony wouldn’t want--” Pepper folded her arms across her chest and the rest of the room devolved into various arguments and negotiations, all centered around Peter  _ not  _ getting Tony back. 

“Hey!” Peter banged his hand on the table, the need to do something making his arm shoot out before he could control it. “I’m an Avenger, right?”

“Junior,” Clint conceded.. 

“Yes. You earned it,” Steve Rogers told him and Peter can’t help but feel the same warmth at that--the idea that he’s earned the loyalty of a team of superheroes, Captain America especially. 

“So let me do this.”  _ I need to do this. _

Fury rocked back on his heels, meeting Peter’s eyes over the heads of his team, sizing him up in a way Peter would never get used to. 

“Let’s get to work.”

***

Tony Stark was avoiding sleep in order to dream. 

Well, not just him. 

“352, Pete.” 

“That’s too easy.” Peter huffed from his position above Tony’s head. Too many hours here watching him nearly climb the walls gave Tony the idea to just create a place for the kid to hang out when he was too antsy to sit at the table.

“I can make it easier.” Tony said, making an adjustment to something on his screen and waving away Friday’s holo suggestion. 

“Fine. 352, 176, 88, 44, 22, 11, 34, 17, 52, 26, 13, 40, 20, 10, 5, 16, 8, 4, 2, 1. Done.” Peter swung down and landed a foot away from Tony’s stool. He was in an oversized old Stark Industries sweatshirt he had unearthed in storage boxes--it made him look like a kid at his first sleepover. 

“You tired yet?” Tony asked.

Peter tried to hide his yawn in his shoulder. “No. You gonna tell me what we’re working on?”

Tony switched off the holo view and focused on the StarkPad on the work table in front of him. “Nope. Nothing worth sharing yet. Wanna talk about it?”

“About the project you won’t tell me about? Obviously.” Peter flopped down in his favorite chair and dragged it over. 

“Such attitude. No, I meant why you won’t sleep. The bags under your eyes have bags.”

Peter swirled in the chair. “I don’t know. Too much going on. It’s fine.”

It was not fine. But Tony hoped that the innards of the case in front of him and the schematics he’d uploaded online would provide some relief. Soon. After he tested it. A few times. 

“Maybe I just need to...what’d you call it? Like a toddler?”

“I said my mind needed to be tired out like a toddler but since you  _ are  _ basically a toddler, you shouldn’t need any prodding, gentle or otherwise, toward sleep.”

“But I do,” Peter said and yawned again. The kid was exhausted. It was why he was here--a sensory overload episode was the last straw that led to May calling Tony and  demanding asking him to help. Not that Tony isn’t getting updates from Karen via Friday every day on the kid’s lack of sleep--but May didn’t need to know that.

“Actually, I’d probably sleep if you didn’t play such old distracting music.”

Tony gasped in mock indignation. “How dare you insult the masters! Friday, we need to provide Peter with a musical education immediately.”

“Absolutely,” The AI replied. 

“Whatever,” Peter said and smirked  when Tony’s usual background noise of classic rock pauses.

“Okay, so.” Tony clapped his hands. “2001.”

Peter rolled his eyes and swiveled the chair again. “2001, 6004, 3002, 1501, 4504, 2252…”

An hour later and the kid was back in his lush perch, as comfortable as Peter wanted, outfitted with everything a teen superhero could want, including an all the new gaming systems and a mini fridge, and Tony had the screen up and Friday--in what amounted for a whisper--was giving him readouts and a timeline on the remaining preparations needed to get the Portable Automated Somnacin IntraVenous Device up and running and ready for testing.

“Friday, add to file under S.W.A.R.E. Clearance Level 12.”

“Sir, should I put the safeguards in for Colonel Rhodes, Ms. Potts and Mr. Parker?”

Tony looked at the readouts and the timeline projections he’d had Friday put together and then to where Peter slept, restlessly, above. 

“Not yet.”

“Sir?” 

Tony jerked away to look behind him as his workshop dimmed around him, walls flickering and shifting in a kaleidoscopic distortion. 

Tony reached up feeling for his sternum and where a scar should be has been replaced by the arc reactor. “What the hell?”

“Sir. Calm down. Breathe. You are dreaming.”

Tony screwed his eyes shut, feeling his stomach drop, his pulse pounding and heart thudding. “Dreaming?” He managed to choke out. 

“Yes. Please, sir. Open your eyes.”

He did. Before him stood Jarvis. Edwin Jarvis. In the flesh. 

“Gonna just, pinch myself. Wake up. DUM-E probably knocked me out, robot insurrection, you know how it is.” Tony pinched himself, hard. And again.

“Not gonna work, is it?” He released a slow breath like in the meditation Pepper was always trying to get him to do. 

“No, sir.”

“You’re...you. That’s impossible.” Tony reached out a hand to touch his old butler. 

“Not when you’re dreaming, sir.”

Tony rocked back on his heels, head taking in his surroundings. “Six impossible things before breakfast, huh?” If Jarvis was number one, the arc reactor number two, then standing in his old workshop that in reality lay at the bottom of the ocean off the coast of Malibu was another. 

“Remember that time you caught me sneaking in after a party in Milan, with the stolen chickens and Maserati?”

“How could I forget, sir?” Jarvis’ eye-roll was a thing of beauty and Tony wanted to weep at the sight of it. 

“This is so much worse than that.”

Though he was sure that incident had been a poor roofie attempt, Tony never tried anything after that without researching it first.

He couldn’t help but feel a pang at the sight around him. Dream or not, it was all very real. “Alright, give me the 411, Jay. Alien tech? Drugs? Coma? What hot mess express have I gotten myself into and what will Pepper be digging me out of?”

A quirk of Jarvis’ lips. “A mess of your own design, sir.” Jarvis folded his hands behind his back and settled into his favorite pose of absolute judgement. 

Tony walked around his work table. On it was a dented gunmetal grey suitcase, blackened in its grooves and chipped on its corners. It looked familiar, like he had seen it in a...

“Dream?”

“I did say that before, sir.”

“God, I missed you.” Tony breathed, and opened the case.

The first PASIV prototype--found in his father’s storage, so hidden that Tony had immediately started tinkering with it. He found the corresponding files in his father’s private archives, also protected more than most of his early blueprints and plans that were always sought after. 

And then, he remembered. 

“Fuck. How many levels?"

“Several, sir.”

Tony rubbed at his eyes, how could it be possible to be bone-crushingly tired in a dream? 

“Has anyone attempted to reach me?”

“No. But the protocols have been overridden and the appropriate parties have been informed--I expect a breach soon.”

“What’s containment? How soon until this could get out to unfriendlies?”

“It depends on if the device or the parties in question are being monitored, sir.”

Tony huffed a breath. “Do you know how long it’s been? Since I’ve been...asleep?”

“By my approximation, almost six hours.” Jarvis said. Tony did a quick calculation and was stunned. Three whole days.

“But I just woke up here.” Tony felt a stab of panic at the idea of lost time, the abyss of an unknown swallowing him whole. If it had happened once, could it happen again.

“I believe due to the lack of a sedative and the fact that your dreamspace isn’t operating like those you researched, perhaps it is closer to real time than previously believed.”

Tony shook his head. “Doubtful. I’m still layers down. It has to have been more than a day."

“I wish I could understand it, sir.”

“Is it--is it because I was stuck in a memory?”

Tony looked around at the lab. Mr. Charles had told him not to build from memory, hadn’t he. Had said that this gambit was reckless, had offered to come and teach him how to figure this out but Tony didn’t want anyone else poking around in his head. And he couldn’t help but feel that time was running out and Peter--

He stood up, knocking the stool over. “Where’s Peter?”

“Not here, sir.”

“Fuck. I didn’t get to explain. I need to get out.” Tony tore his hand through his hair. The last time he’d seen the kid, he snapped. “He’s going to think I abandoned him.”

_ You did.  _ He thought. You pushed him away. And for what? For this? To get stuck here?

“Perhaps you should focus on staying calm.” Jarvis said. 

“They’re gonna come in here after me. The kid too. I can’t. I’m not stable. Right? My layers are built on memory. They’ll get stuck. Peter could…” He trailed off at the idea of Peter stuck in some of his worst memories, layers that he’d build to tackle one by one using the PASIV as a dream simulation, in order to deal with everything that was spilling out of him--the shit that froze him up out of the blue, that caused him to think his heart was exploding. He saw the beginnings of the PTSD in Peter, watched him from the lab while he tossed in his perch. The solution had seemed simple, fix the PASIV, fix your brain, fix Peter. 

He ran a hand over his mouth, chin itching as his calloused palm came into contact with the growing stubble. “I can’t let that happen.” 

Tony spun around and brought up his holo screens, mind racing as he began to build the layers together from memory. He worked fast but efficiently, it helped that he didn’t need to eat or relieve himself, though the itch was there. 

If his team was going to come in to get him, protocols be damned, he was going to have to map it out for them and if Peter came in too, he was going to have to keep him safe. No matter the cost. 

 


	2. Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for the wonderful response. <3

“What’s the problem?” Fury’s voice broke the silence in the lab, where the only sound for hours up until that point had been the whir of the various machines and tech, the tinkering as Bruce measured and scanned at the workbench in the center of the room. 

Bruce opened his mouth, seemingly ready to launch into the lengthy explanation he and Peter had parsed together earlier but then (and this may have had to do with the glare Fury threw him) deflated, pushing his glasses up onto his tangled mess of hair. “Peter’s metabolism won’t allow the somnacin to take effect.”

“Bruce won’t let me try again,” Peter said from his position on top of the counter in Bruce’s main lab. He’d taken to swinging his legs out for lack of something better to do since the PASIV was taken away from him. Bruce wouldn’t let him move from his spot for fear that movement would cause a sudden reaction, and the urge to get up to explore was distracting. 

“I’m worried that it’s taking effect slower than it does on the rest of us rather than not working at all -- too much could lead to an overdose,” Bruce explained, the ever present lines between his eyebrows growing deeper. 

The somnacin had knocked out the entire team with no issue--Bruce even correctly measured the right dose for himself (not sharing the same caution he had for Peter, of course) and so the experiment was a success. But the team refused to dreamshare together until they _ all  _ could. 

“How soon will we know if that’s the case?” Fury asked, leaning against the farther lab table and looking like many an exasperated teacher that Peter’d had the displeasure of meeting. 

“Hopefully twenty-four hours.” Bruce glanced back at Peter and sighed. “Maybe forty-eight.” 

“I’m not sure I like that the sound of that. How does that fit into our timeline?” 

“It doesn’t,” Peter said around a yawn. He hadn’t gotten a full night sleep since they’d gotten there 3 days ago -- he spent most of his nights swinging around the “Spidey Gym” that Tony had built him downstairs or FaceTiming Ned and MJ late until they all fell asleep to the blue light glow of each other’s screens. 

Bruce held up one of the StarkPads and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I haven’t even worked on what’ll get us down as many levels as we need--the notes you’ve given me are good but I don’t know how to counteract for Peter. Could push us back a week or more.”

Fury pulled out a phone that looks like it might’ve been older than Peter. He pressed a button and brought it up to his ear, ducking his head so that he could tuck the phone against shoulder. It was such a normal look for such an extraordinary human that Peter wanted to laugh. But he could hear the dial tone as if the phone were on speaker and heard someone answer with a hazy “‘Lo?”

“I need you.”

A curse just as muffled as the greeting. “Where?”

Fury’s mouth lifted in what could’ve been a smile, if the man ever genuinely emoted and from Peter’d seen so far, he didn’t much. “New York.”

The other man--because from the deep voice and tone, Peter could hear he’s masculine--groans. “My debt is paid, man.”

“Consider it a favor and I’ll overlook the den.”

“That was eight years ago.”

“I’ll send a plane.”  
  


***

Peter stood in the line of Avengers on the landing strip outside of the compound. If he weren’t so tired and anxious, he would have made a comment about them looking like a promo for some epic movie, a clip from the scene where the team needed to work out their differences and vowed to defeat the big boss together. 

“What do we know about this guy?” Sam asked, arms folded as Fury walks to greet the plane. 

Cap frowned as Fury climbed the stairs once the plane’s doors lifted open. “Fury trusts him.”

“And do we trust Fury?”

If Mr. Stark were here, Peter knew what he would say: Depends on the day.

A man emerged from the plane then, a hand lifted to shield his eyes from the sun as he takes the steps slowly, a leather bag clutched to his side. He wore an oversized tweed jacket and a rumpled white button down underneath that, as if he’d gotten dressed too quickly to consider throwing on something clean. He looked like some of the professors and doctors from Columbia who came for guest lectures at Midtown High. 

Fury followed close behind the man, expression unreadable as always and Peter got the impression he was blocking the man’s way back up the steps by guiding him down them. 

“Bloody asshole, Fury. You didn’t tell me the Avengers were going to be here.” The man said over his shoulder as he ran his free hand through unruly curls. 

Fury looked over the line the team made, as if about to roll call a class of Kindergarten students. “Yusuf, this is my team. Team, this is Yusuf, a chemist out of Mombasa.”

“Yeah, I know who he is,” Clint said, a dark look passing over his face. He turned to Natasha and said something too low for the rest of them to hear, but Natasha’s face took on the steely look it usually did when she was sizing up a mark.

Yusuf looked away, clutching his tweed jacket tightly together. 

“He’s going to help with our Spiderkid problem and take you through a few test runs with the PASIV. I don’t want any surprises.”

“Yes, sir,” Cap said.

“No, sir!” Yusuf piped up. “I don’t take civilians into dreams anymore, not after Qatar.”

Fury’s face pinched together. “This isn’t a negotiation and they’re hardly civilians.”

Yusuf jabbed his finger at Peter. “That one is a kid! I’m not training a kid; too unstable, too risky!”

Peter was about to open his mouth to say, no,  _ he wasn’t just a kid  _ when Cap stepped forward and Peter was reminded of the last PSA he had to watch with Steve Rogers in it-- _ “So you got detention” _ \--and imagined him pulling out a wooden chair and sitting backwards on it to offer this man a disappointed lecture on the merits of just doing your damn job. 

“The kid’s one of us. You train us all or we’ll find someone else who will.”

Yusuf hiked his bag on his shoulder. It looked like one good tug on the strap would snap the threads. He looked a moment away from high-tailing it back to the plane but Fury stepped forward and put a hand on his shoulder. “Yusuf’s a team player. He knows the drill.”

***

Two hours later (Yusuf needed a hot bath and time to argue with Fury in the guest wing of the Compound) they were in one of the virtual training rooms --an open space with shockingly white walls that could be molded into any environment or situation. 

Yusuf’s eyes roamed the room with the same delight Peter had felt when he first stepped into the Compound’s training facilities. 

Peter’s stomach twists at the memory. Tony’s smile had been wide and unguarded as he showed him the Spidey gym, the small lab that they would both share, the training rooms where the team would meet, giving him access to these places that were already feeling like home. 

That felt like forever ago. Before the dust. Before the battle. Before  _ this _ . 

A clap jolted Peter back to the present and Yusuf cleared his throat as the Avengers settled around him. 

His eyes traveled over all of them in the same way they had an hour ago. He seemed to make a decision but not before muttering,  _ “Damnit Cobb, turning me into a bleeding heart.” _

“So. Who wants to dream first?”

 

***

Yusuf hooked the machine, a PASIV, up to the room’s mainframe. The walls pulsed with a light red sheen, the color of an early sunset. 

“We’ve already done this,” Natasha said in a low voice to Clint, who was standing by the door, arms crossed and legs firmly planted on the ground, looking about ready to bolt. “Why waste more time?”

“Because,” Yusuf said, “ _ I  _ don’t work with this many unknown variables without testing first.”

“Sounds like you speak from experience,” said Bucky, who hadn’t stepped out from the shadow of the doorway.

“Some.” Yusuf said, pulling out something from his case. 

“You sure you want to do this?” Bucky asked Steve, tilting his head and pushing against the door as if to say,  _ Let’s just go.  _

Unlike Clint and Bucky, Steve had made himself as comfortable as possible, sitting cross-legged on a neon green mat on which someone has written BLANK LAB 1 in black sharpie. It reminded Peter of the mats they use in gym.

“Yeah, Buck.” 

Steve tensed as Yusuf approached him with the needle. 

“Just a poke, Captain,” Yusuf assured him. 

“What concentration are you using?” Bruce asked, leaning forward to take a look at the vials of somnacin lined up neatly on a sterilized metal tray. “Since he’s…”

“Enhanced as hell?” Yusuf finished for him. He waved a hand. “We can compare notes after class. Never dream-shared with a superhero before, mate, and I need to concentrate. “

“Why can’t we all just go in the dream now?” Peter protested. He was pacing the room, his body a circus of nerves. 

“Cause, kid, I don’t trust you all not to muck it up if you were together. Have to be sure this’ll take, anyway.” Yusuf pulled at the wiring along the PASIV, an old and battered thing, the case looking like it’d been through a few wars and just about lived to tell the tale. But he insisted on using this over anything SHIELD had offered up. 

“Comforting.” Sam muttered. 

“You ready, Captain?” Yusuf asked. 

Steve leaned back against the mat. He looked too rigid for someone about to go to sleep--but Peter knew he didn’t see it as that. In fact, Peter wasn’t sure the Captain actually slept. Tony mentioned something to him the last they talked, about Bruce being able to hook him up with a light sleep aid if needed, but Peter refused. Looking at the dark circles deepening around most of the Avengers’ eyes, he actually wished he had talked to Bruce about it. Being induced into sleep and getting sleep were two different things and Peter figured it would be better to have actually rested before all this. He doubted he’d feel better after they actually started training. 

***

The walls darkened immediately. From the light red to a dark red that faded to black and then gray. All around, the gray of storm clouds over New York City, of pigeons in Washington Square Park, of the brackish water that surrounded Manhattan. 

“What’s meant to happen,” Yusuf explained as the walls pulsed with that same dark monotone, “is that we’ll get to see Captain Rogers’s dream foyer--the entrance to the subconscious, like stepping into the front room of his mind.”

The gray began to lighten up around them from the bottom of the walls, spreading slowly to the ceiling as a burst of light like sunlight filled the corners. And then color. In bursts. And Peter spun around, having stopped moving as the room transformed into a bar. 

“What the?” Bucky began, bracing himself. 

“Shhh.” Yusuf flapped his hands. 

Peter laughed, thinking of Yusuf like a bird or a Maestro at the head of a very odd orchestra- and walked toward a wall to examine it, wondering how it would look from above, but Rhodey beckoned him closer. The remaining Avengers huddled in the center of the bar, as people in uniforms milled about. 

“Don’t tell Tony that Steve’s dream sanctum is a bar.” Clint whispered. 

“Kinda hard to believe,” Peter whispered back, eyes trying to catch where the dream projection ended and the room began. If it weren’t so fascinating, it might have felt suffocating. 

Steve strolled through the door, the tan uniform complete with his hat between his side and arm. He stopped right before the bar as his eyes landed on someone at a corner table, the room seeming to expand with his view and as he walked, Peter felt like they too were walking. 

“Who’s that?” Peter asked, trying to see in the dim lighting of the bar. 

“Peggy Carter,” Bucky replied, moving further into the room, his eyes landing on every corner and surface, face and glass.

“Is this a memory?” Rhodey asked, reaching out to touch a half empty bottle of whiskey on the bar. His hand passed through it. 

“No.” Bucky looked quickly at Peggy and then away again. “We never wore civvies here.”

Steve froze as he drifted forward, still in the haze that entering the dream had caused. “Peggy.”

Peggy stood up from the table, leaning forward to kiss his cheek, lips lingering there like she too was frozen. She breathed out his name on a sigh.

“Do these get R rated?” Sam asked, covering Peter’s eyes with his palms. 

“Don’t be a birdbrain.” Peter shoved the Falcon away with a grin and met Bucky’s eye-roll. 

This was  _ Peggy Carter _ .  _ The Peggy Carter, founder of SHIELD _ , master Spy and all around Badass. Peter and MJ spent many walks home from school, runs during gym (where he pretended to go a steady pace of 6 minutes per mile) and late night conversations when May thought he was asleep idolizing Agent Carter.

Of course, at the time, neither of them knew Peggy Carter was Tony’s Aunt Peggy, who would watch over Tony when Jarvis was unable and yet another nanny had quit. Tony had run away to his Aunt Peg’s a few times--a thing Tony had told Peter  at 2 a.m. one Thursday, after he’d been reprimanding Peter for not going to bed and he was in the mood to get nostalgic. 

“If you haven’t planned out your dreamshare, you get this,” Yusuf explained and Peter’s eyes snapped back to man as he adjusted something on the PASIV. “It’s a good starting place.hough a mate of mine --a right bastard -- thinks besides Limbo, you’re at your most vulnerable here.”

“Limbo?” Peter asked, hand passing through one of the chairs at a lopsided wooden table.

Yusuf’s eyes flicked to Rhodey who shook his head. Yusuf cleared his throat as Peggy led Steve over to the dance floor. Steve’s face was a twisted mask of wonder and grief. 

“We’ll let the Captain get comfortable with the dream. I’ll enter now to help guide him through a few tricks. Just observe, yeah?” 

Yusuf hooked himself up to the PASIV with the practiced motions of a man too used to the task. It reminded Peter of watching Ned’s grandma test her insulin, muscle memory taking over the ministrations. He wondered how necessary this was for Yusuf, if this was the only way he could dream. 

“Parker.” Yusuf produced a beat up speaker and StarkPod classic, the same one that had a permanent place hooked up to speakers in their kitchen when Uncle Ben would make blueberry pancakes on Sunday mornings. “In a half hour, press play. Not a second more or a second less.”

And with that Yusuf joined Steve’s dream. 

Thirty minutes felt like hours exploring the limits of the dreamspace, entering rooms beyond the bar--Steve’s childhood bedroom, Bucky’s living room, a park where he used to sit and draw back then and now when he’s in the city, the common room at Avengers’ Tower--each place Yusuf telling Steve to call up objects, change a detail so that walls were different colors, daylight turned to pitch dark. 

Peter felt a bit like he was in a virtual reality game and in the end the walls rippled like a mirage as  _ Hell’s Bells  _ by AC/DC--Yusuf called the song a kick--bore Steve and Yusuf back to wakefulness. 

When Yusuf sat up and stretched, he took the StarkPod and speaker from Peter with the reverence reserved for nostalgic things. 

“Your turn, kid.” 

 

***

Tony had lost count of the hours. It had to be four or maybe five days topside--that felt like a month in the dream.

“Run it, Jay.”

“Running contingency plan number 3072, sir.”

The screen projected on the wall showed an approximate diagram of the layers and the players--Cap, Rhodey, Nat, Clint, Bruce and Peter. And in every plan, Peter showed up where he wasn’t, sent to limbo by a projection intent on getting rid of unfamiliar dreamers. No matter how he tried to get his mind to prepare for the onslaught of tourists in his dream, he knew they would be treated as a threat. 

Tony was stuck in the lab. 

He found that out his first week in the dream, where he went to dismantle a layer himself and found that the door wouldn’t unlock. He manifested chainsaws, his gauntlets, a goddamn axe, but nothing broke through. 

“You’re protected here.”

“It’s my own goddamn mind, why would I need to hide?”

“Because you set up a maze of pain in each layer.” Jarvis explained, gesturing toward the map they had plotted together, still an approximation but one Tony felt confident in. 

“This is a failsafe.” Jarvis, who Tony knew was also a failsafe, explained. 

“I need to get out if I’m going to get to Peter.”

“Perhaps, you can allow the others to do it for you.” Jarvis mused. 

“How?”

“They will encounter your memories and will either be passive participants or active but regardless, once the memory is over, the layer should collapse.”

Tony tossed a throwing star at the door to the outside, his new nemesis. 

“How’s that work?”

“It is built on memory. And not theirs. There will be nothing holding them there once the memory diminishes and since it does not belong to them--they’re will be nothing to buttress the layer once it is over.”

“Unless they create something new.” Tony said, imagining Steve doing something ridiculously heroic in the face of one of Tony’s nightmare layers. 

“I don’t believe so.” 

Tony waved at the projection on the wall. “Run that contingency, will you?”

“Of course, sir.”

And so they did. 

 


	3. Three

“Look, my experience with some...not well people has taught me that the more trauma a person suffers, the harder dream-sharing can be for them. Your mind tries to overcompensate for the trauma. He might be levels down. Limbo even.” From his position in the vent above, Peter can see down into Yusuf’s temporary lab, which looks like something out of a modern Frankenstein retelling with a haphazard collection of bunsen burners,  erlenmeyer flasks, and test tubes, all in various states of use. 

From what Peter could tell so far, Yusuf was replenishing his stores of somnacin while Rhodey tried to press for details of Yusuf’s past dream sharing experience and Bruce assisted with the more critical stages of the process.

“Better be reimbursed for this,” Yusuf muttered while capping off another vial and setting it on the stand.  

“How will we know?” Rhodey asked. Yusuf bit off a curse and rushed over to bunsen burner that held a boiling substance in a beaker. “Yusuf!” Rhodey barked and the man jumped--it was hard for even civilians to not jump at Rhodes’s tone.

Now that Rhodey had Yusuf’s attention, he asked again. “Limbo. How will we know?”

“We’ll know. Right when we hook up to the PASIV. There’ll be activity.”

“Is Tony in greater danger the longer we wait? It’s been almost a week already.”

Yusuf sighed. “Hard to be sure how many layers he is. And I can’t be sure how many layers he’s in. No one has been able to get past layer one. And because of what you’ve told me, I don’t want to risk a dreamshare more than once, even to explore. We go in when we’re ready.”

“And how will we know when we’re ready?” Bruce asked softly. 

“When we can’t wait any longer.”

 

******

Peter followed the three by creeping through the vents deeper into the compound. He got lost only once but so far no one--namely FRIDAY--had discovered him. 

Crawling up the elevator shaft was not something he had anticipated doing this late at night but he did so anyway, pausing every rung on the ladder to stop and hear which way Rhodey was leading Bruce and Yusuf. 

They stopped outside of Tony’s personal quarters, a place that Peter didn’t want to access via the vents. He crawled back a bit and dropped down around the corner, wiping sweaty palms on his pants. 

No one offered to let him see Tony before and he didn’t ask, but the thought of him, lying hooked up to a machine that wasn’t keeping him alive but suspended in his own mind made his stomach churn. 

“You gonna come out or are you just gonna stand there?” Rhodey asked as Peter hovered around the corner. 

“Oh, hey. Is this where the secret midnight team meeting is?”

“If you’re having trouble sleeping, I could give you a sedative.” Yusuf offered.

“No.” Bruce and Rhodey said at the same time. 

Peter rolled his eyes. “I’m good, thanks.”

Rhodey peered at him, a look he’d seen leveled at Tony a few thousand times. “Are you, Pete?”

“Can we see him?” Peter ignored Rhodey and nodded toward the door. “That’s what you’re doing, right, seeing him?”

Peter didn’t have to say who  _ he  _ was. 

FRIDAY’s voice broke in, “Mr. Parker, the Captain is making hot chocolate in the kitchen and has asked if you would like to join him.” 

“Go ahead, we’ll join you soon,” Bruce told Peter, giving him an out he probably should’ve taken. His palms prickled with sweat and his stomach twisted at the idea of what lay behind that door. But he hadn’t gotten this far--an Avenger--to duck out on something like this, something that he knew he should do. Tony wouldn’t hesitate if the situations were reversed, so why should Peter? 

“I want to see Tony first.”

***

When Peter first came to live with his Aunt and Uncle, he would spend hours curled up in a ball on his bed in the morning before school, a knot of unease so tight in his stomach that to unfurl from his rigid position was to send shockwaves of nausea up his throat. If he escaped an episode, sometimes it would creep up on the subway or bus, or in the first few minutes of class so that the only relief was a bathroom stall or a cot in the Nurse’s office. 

A few Emergency Room visits and testing and the only answer was severe anxiety. Nothing was physically wrong with him--even though Peter felt like his stomach was being split into pieces and he couldn’t stomach anything, there was no disease or illness ravaging his body. 

Ben began getting up early and they would do brain teasers in the kitchen--the harder they were, the more distracted Peter would get. Mornings lost to worrying about being away from a bathroom or missing class transformed into an early morning ritual of brain teasers and trying to finish that Saturday’s  _ Times  _ sudoku puzzle before the other. 

After Ben was murdered and then the aftermath of the spider bite, Peter spent what felt like days with his cheek pressed against the cool tiles of the bathroom floor, moving only when May knocked to check in on him, trying to rally for her sake.  

He hadn’t felt that pain since then but now as he followed Bruce and Rhodey down the hall, with Yusuf gawking at every inch of the apartment--Tony’s taste for luxury wasn’t gaudy but it was noticeable--he felt it creeping back to the surface. 

“Jesus, this looks like one of Arthur’s grand designs.” Yusuf muttered as they were led down a hallway that gave glimpses of stars and a cloud covered moon from evenly spaced skylights above. “Stark has good taste.”

“Nah, this is all Pepper,” Peter told him, eyes fixed on the stars above. He never got sick of the unobstructed views of the night sky, free of the red haze from light pollution they usually got in Queens. Snapchat didn’t do it justice and Facetime didn’t work up on the roof where he usually camped out to stare at it, even though every time he’d been there he wished he could share it with May. She geeked out with him over Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan documentaries when he came home from patrol and didn’t feel like sleeping, the only rest he could find was under his favorite patchwork blanket and a bowl of half-burnt popcorn that May made. 

A door down the hallway swung open, spilling soft light in the hallway for a brief moment before Pepper’s frame blocked it out. 

She didn’t look surprised to see the three of them, even Yusuf, who was basically a stranger. 

“Sorry, Pepper.” Bruce said. “I thought you had gone to bed.”

Pepper sighed. “That was the plan. Seems like Tony’s getting enough sleep for the both of us.”

“We can come back later, Ms. Potts.” Yusuf offered. 

“No, that’s okay.” She squeezed Bruce’s shoulder as she passed before she turned to the youngest in the hallway. “Peter, do you need anything?”

She reminded Peter of the first times he stayed overnight at the compound: a surprise pick up from Happy on a cool October Friday when, a few hours after Chinese takeout and chocolate shakes, Tony looked at the clock he had fastened around DUM-E’s neck and declared “Spiderkid bedtime,” and ushered him off to bed, before turning back to his work table. Pepper found him wandering the upper level and led him to his room, the one that Tony had mentioned when he first turned down the offer to join the Avengers. “There’s clothes, pajamas, extra pillows. Tried to talk Tony out of the Iron Man toothbrush but he wouldn’t budge.” At Peter’s surprised look, she gave a soft, fond smile. “We just wanted you to be comfortable here.”

“Pete? What’s-” Rhodey’s question brought him back to this hallway, a year later when Tony wasn’t down in his workshop but somewhere beyond and instead of feeling warm and comfortable, he felt cold and achy. The hairs on the back of his neck and arms stood up and every sound narrowed to a background hum.

“Get down!” he yelled and pulled Pepper to the floor as chunks of the wall behind them exploded, pieces raining down along with glass shards and wood. 

Pepper was saying something, but it was  _ too loud, too much,  _ a piercing ringing in his ears echoing like after Toomes and the plane. 

Gunshots. A familiar  _ zinng  _ as Cap’s shield flew above their heads. Yusuf ducked around them, scrambling around the corner for cover before being pulled away by Rhodey, as another blast knocked Yusuf back down. Rhodey pushed him behind him before ducking around the corner away from the intruders at the end of the hallway.

“Tony, Tony’s in there!” Pepper yelled and Peter didn’t think, he just jumped, launching off the wall and onto the ceiling, careful to miss the broken edges of glass as he flipped himself over Rhodey and Cap who was fighting with a figure in all black combat gear. 

“Peter!” Cap yelled as he flew over his head, pushing off Steve’s opponent before sprinting down the hallway. “Stand down!”

But Peter was already in the room where Natasha, Clint and Bucky were fighting three similarly armed men. A hole where a bank of windows had given Pepper and Tony a view of trees and privacy continued to crumble. And in the center of the room, a King sized bed and Tony, undisturbed despite the chaos around him. 

“Peter, Jesus, get out of here!” Clint yelled and dodged one of the guard’s punches as Peter skirted by them, ducking and sliding under the fray to get to the bed.

Tony looked dead. 

Too still on a bed as chaos unfurled around them--Cap and Rhodey bursting into the room, one following the body of an attacker who sailed through the remainder of the doorway and the other on his six. 

“Who are these guys?” Rhodey shouted. 

“No markings, different fighting styles, big guns--mercs.” Natasha shouted back and slammed the butt of one of the guns down on the head of the last mercenary. 

A set of explosions somewhere to Peter’s right knocked him off his feet. He landed on something both hard and soft-the body of one of the mercs. He scrambled up and into someone--Cap? Bucky?

Lightning struck the room. Or what looked like it. Peter slammed his eyes shut but he could see the echo of it burned across his shut eyelids--as if a camera had gone off just in front of his face. 

When he opened them he couldn’t even see the outlines of his teammates or hear the barest rustle of their movements. Everything was too still, frozen. His stomach twisted, the hairs at the back of his neck standing up further this time with nerves, just nerves. 

“Kid?” Bucky rasped off to his left as the emergency lights, dim orange things, blinked on.  Peter could see Bucky reach out his Wakandan--Shuri--made arm, head pinned by invisible hands.

“Peter? Where’s Peter?” Rhodey’s voice sounded strained.

Peter couldn’t speak. His throat moved, his mouth opened but no sound came out, he couldn’t turn in Rhodey’s direction either or move from the position he was stuck in. “Here. I’m here.” He finally choked out. 

“Where’s Bruce?” Natasha fought to get the question out and coughed.

“Getting Yusuf and Pepper to the panic room.” Cap said, his jaw working as he too struggled to move. 

“The hell is going on?” Bucky asked. 

“I believe that’s my cue.” A man stepped through one of the jagged holes in the compound’s wall, seemingly impervious to the sparks and metal surrounding it,  as if he were walking in from street level instead of stories above ground.

“Hammer.” Rhodey’s lips curled around the name, throwing the man a look Peter only saw him level at General Ross and that paparazzi who pushed Peter when Peter wouldn’t let the guy photograph him. 

“Heya.” 


	4. Four

The man who Tony used a blown up photo of his face as Peter’s web-shooting targets gave a jaunty wave and paused before bottom of the Tony’s bed, shaking his head. “Man, I wish this were under better circumstances.”

Cap thrashed and Hammer sighed, a loud and obnoxious noise that grated on Peter’s ears like a fork scratched against a plate.  “Apologies for the paralysis. I needed something to keep you contained.” He pulled a small device from his pocket and flicked a switch. 

The highest pitch that Peter had ever heard assaulted his ears as a stabbing agonizing pain hit them, like a knife carving out his eardrums. He shouted and tried to cover his ears but his arms wouldn’t move or his legs, or even his head so that he could protect one ear in the crook of his shoulder. 

His vision blurred, his head felt like he had just gotten off a Six Flags roller coaster and even as the pain in his ears dulled, it was replaced by a searing throb. He felt wet slide down his neck and realized that his ears were bleeding. But he still couldn’t move. 

None of them could. 

Hammer grinned like a comic book villain. “Just give me a sec, will you?” 

He walked around to the side of Tony’s bed where the wires hooked up to the PASIV and vital machines ran to the corner of the room--the machines miraculously untouched in the fight. Hammer picked up one of the wires, a thick grey one and followed it to the PASIV and then back to Tony’s arm, fingers inches from the inside of his elbow. 

“Don’t touch him!” Peter felt the words come from his sternum and he shook in his place, rooted as he was.

“You’re right. Wouldn’t want to get ahead of myself.” Hammer said, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Now by my estimate we have about 15 minutes to talk before the paralysis from this handy sonic taser subsides. Probably less, thanks to you supers.”

They were interrupted by more mercs, surrounding them from the ceiling which Peter didn’t know was exposed, the side Hammer had come in, and the entry. 

“Just on time.” Hammer rocked back on his heels. “I’ll cut to the chase, okay? I want Stark’s dreamshare tech. I’ve got a generous investor and endless resources. Now you might be thinking, well, Justin, you’re a brilliant scientist and innovator, why don’t you just develop it yourself?” 

“Because it’d be a piece of shit,” Clint muttered and Rhodey coughed to hide his laugh.

“And the answer is...I did. But my investor won’t fork up the cash knowing that  _ Iron Man _ has a similar product.” He rolled his eyes. “So. Here I am--after  _ months  _ of careful planning.” He took the device out of his pocket and twirled it like a fidget spinner. Peter wanted nothing more than to break free of the paralysis and web this guy’s mouth shut. 

Hammer clapped his hands like he was a Kindergarten teacher trying to get the attention of his unruly students. “Let me tell you how this is gonna go down. You all,” He waved a hand to include everyone in the room. “Are going to convince Tony Stark to abandon his dream-sharing tech. I believe the term is inception? Yeah, I want you to do that. My team and I will be here in case things go south and I know Pepper, your green giant friend and the chemist will be just fine until you get back.”

 

***

“Tony’s kept you a wrapped up little secret, huh?” Hammer said to Peter as one of his soldiers, an expressive man who rolled his eyes every time Hammer spoke, dragged the PASIV to the middle of the room, careful not to disturb the lines leading to Tony, Cap, Clint and Rhodey.

Cap was the first one they dosed, afraid that he would break out of his restraints. Then Rhodey, quickly and Clint, but not before he disarmed one of the guards and gave up only when Hammer pointed his own piece to Peter’s head. 

Peter’s hands were bound with vibranium, his legs chained so tight that he had lost feeling in his feet minutes ago. 

“I will feed you your fingers if you touch him.” Natasha, who had already broken one soldier’s nose and bitten deep grooves into another’s palm when they tried to bind her, growled as the soldier pushed up Peter’s hoodie sleeve and prepared to insert the PASIV’s needle. 

The soldier hesitated, looking to Hammer who threw his hands up. “Fine. Take care of the Widow first then.”

The soldier chuckled under his breath and muttered, “What an arse,” before untangling another line and pulling it over to Natasha. “Careful, love.” He said before leaning down and whispering in her ear.

She gave a jerky nod and sat back, head against the wall, winking at Peter when she caught his eye. She slumped over a second later, the somnacin instantly taking effect like the others. 

And then he was alone. He felt a balloon form in his stomach and each breath he took was a little harder to catch. 

“Kid.  _ Kid!”  _ Hammer snapped his fingers in front of Peter’s face, the sound crackling in his ear like a fork scratched against a plate. He twisted his head away as a cloud of the other man’s sweat and nearly toxic cologne stung, collecting in the back of his throat so Peter choked. “Jesus, did my guys hit you too hard?”

“Don’t die on me before Stark wakes up, okay? I need better leverage than the A-Team.” Hammer smiled, even though Peter could see a line of sweat just above his lip. 

“I won’t help you.” Peter said, finally, finding it easier to grab for some bravado, some spark of something--like he did on a spaceship when Thanos was coming and the only thing he could think was  _ What would Tony do? How would Tony act? _

But then as he fell to the ground in Tony’s arms he thought of what Tony said after the ferry disaster--when Peter couldn’t think of any excuse but the truth,  _ I was trying to be like you. _

And Mr. Stark had said,  _  I wanted you to be better. _

“Oh, you’ll help me.” Hammer said. “You’ll help me because you’re a good kid. And you don’t want your teammates to die and if you don’t, I will yank you out of the dream and put a bullet in the PASIV. Not sure what that’ll do but I don’t think anyone will wake up from that. Do you?”

Peter swallowed and tried not to breathe in any more of Hammer’s sweat-clogged musty cologne. “Mr. Stark’s too smart to be tricked into giving you anything.” 

“Maybe. But I’ve done my research and I’d bet he’d give _you_ anything you ask for.” Hammer signaled the same soldier over, who rolled his eyes at being summoned. “And you’re going to convince him that it’s safer for you if he destroys his plans for the PASIV. Got it?”

The soldier’s eyes narrowed behind Hammer as he grabbed the same wire he’d abandoned before. “Happy dreams, kid.” Hammer said as the soldier, gentler than Peter expected, inserted the needle in his elbow. 

“Wait for the kick,” the soldier said, which made absolutely no sense but before he could ask, he was out.


	5. Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you SO much for all your comments, kudos and bookmarks. You're the best!

“Sir, it’s time.”

Dream or not, Tony did hit his head as he slid out from under the Starkmobile--a deep red monstrosity composite of every car he had ever loved, a project only made in dreams.

“Already? That’s what?” Tony squinted, though he really didn’t need to, at the deep grooves he had made on the workshop’s back wall. Every day--or what felt like a day--that he was stuck in his own dream juice, he had marked with a deep line. “Only seventeen days short of my win. Nice job, Jay.”

“Your insistence to bet against me is nothing short of foolhardy since I am, of course, you.” Jarvis stood just in front of the entrance, always appearing or leaving when he was most needed. He wasn’t sure he would ever get used to seeing Jarvis and not just hearing him. More than once he had startled at the sight of his beloved butler. 

“Way to give me an existential hangover, J.”

He could almost hear the man’s eye-roll. “Should I roll out the welcome mat, sir?”

“You know the drill. Let’s get the party started!” Tony walked over to the door that in reality had led to the garage. In the dreamspace, it was grey, like fog on a New York autumn morning. He pushed his hand through it and snatched it back. The same unease, the same desperate anxiety that he was used to in the moments after waking up from a night terror, rigid with choked on screams, swallowed him. 

“It should ease. When they break down--”

“The levels, blah blah. I know. You’re literally rehashing what we figured out a few dream days ago.”

Tony slammed the door. “Can you tell who’s up there? Any Hammer goons?”

“No sir, I believe just Mr. Rogers, Mr. Barton, Ms. Romanoff and Colonel Rhodes.” Jarvis paused.

Tony held his breath, dread filling his stomach. This had always been a foolhardy plan from the start, one based on hopes and a lot of what-ifs and the feeling that twisted his stomach was not unlike what he felt like trying out Mark 2 for the first time. “And?” 

“Mr. Parker, sir.”

“Ah. There it is.” Tony felt a clench in his chest that he mirrored with a clenched his fist. And then the damned alert warnings of the workshop blared with a sudden, brutal force, AC/DC’s Thunderstruck reverberating inside his head as well as outside of it in the workshop. 

“Off!” He barked and blinked against the absence of the bright flashing intrusion. 

“Sir? Do you require any assistance?”

Tony shook his head, eyes scanning the workshop and the ways he could occupy himself until--well, until he could leave. 

“No. You know what to do.”

“Very good, sir. Do not get into any more trouble.”

Tony laughed, it was not a sound he was used to down here and his throat protested at the movement. 

Jarvis turned to leave, a thing Tony could not do no matter how much he willed his dreamspace to yield. 

“And Jarvis?” 

The man turned, his right eyebrow rising in question. 

“Take care of my kid.”  
  


****

The first thing that Peter did when he opened his eyes was shove a hand in his jean pocket and pull out the Iron Man keychain that had carried his apartment key since he was eight.  

When Yusuf had flailed his hands and  _ insisted  _ on each of the team finding a  totem in their “how to dreamshare” lessons after his own first attempt  (his dream sanctum had been the Liberty Science Center--a half empty exhibit that Yusuf said needed work. Obviously they had run out of time), Peter hadn’t been able to come up with anything. What did he have that was so significant that he could use it to distinguish between a dream and reality? 

He had turned his entire backpack upside down on his bed, sorting everything into groups of various significance. His web-shooters were too clunky and Yusuf had vetoed any tech so half of the things Tony had made for him or his cell phone were out of the question. In the end all he was left with was his Metro card, some crumpled up bills and his keys. 

He had almost forgotten his keychain, a small bobble of a thing that had been tossed onto his lap after Uncle Ben’s Sunday morning bagel run, disrupting a riveting commercial break from his cartoons and resuming a fight over who the best Avenger was. The keychain, Peter realized, had been a concession. Like many boys his age, Uncle Ben had been swept up in the patriotism and heroism of the Captain America comics and remained loyal even after New York welcomed Iron Man home. Peter--after an awesome (for him) and distressing (for his Aunt and Uncle) night at the Stark Expo-- had been steadfast in his support and belief that Iron Man was the coolest superhero  _ ever.  _

Pressing the worn button on Iron Man’s back,the ARC reactor at the front lit up, the small circle of light spilling onto his fingers like it had so many times in his childhood. It had broken pretty soon after its purchase, after Peter had almost always had a finger pushing at it, absently and on purpose, on the subway, on his way home, up the fifth floor walk-up to his apartment. It was an easy choice for a totem, once he had noticed it again. 

“So…” he said, sliding the keychain in his pocket. “That’s unexpected.”

He wasn’t in the Liberty Science Center exhibit or even the Compound’s workshop where he spent so many hours beside Tony or in his perch, a place that he realized felt like home now and made him a bit homesick for it. 

No, the dreamspace that he found himself in wasn’t familiar at all. 

“Steve? Clint? Nat!” Peter whirled around as a gentle breeze coming from the lake in front of him made him shiver. “Rhodey?” 

Nothing. It was eerie. Too quiet. A real lake--and he reached for his totem on instinct now because even though he knew this wasn’t real, it still felt so much like it-- would have at least rustled with life, birds, squirrels, frogs or fish disturbing some of the peace. Instead, it was like looking at a painting and knowing there was an optical illusion just out of sight. It was off. 

His shoulders ached from bunching up under the cold that was creeping down the neck of his hoodie, and his eyes were starting to burn as he kept his eyes focused, ready for sign of any movement, the last light dying over the lake. “Tony?” He rasped. 

And then the breeze stirred the tall grass along the boundaries of the lake, the only change in the quiet before he heard the high pitched chatter of a little kid. 

“And Mama, do you think Daddy will really come? He was almost done with his meeting and Jarvis promised to let him know about the surprise.”

A few yards away, on the farthest border of the lake from Peter, a little boy with floppy dark hair bounded to the edge, waving something so wildly, it almost flew from his hand as he came to a halt in the silt and sand of the marshy expanse around the water. 

“Tony, be careful, darling.” The woman, Maria Stark, drew a hand over her eyes as her son went knees first into the mud, giggling as a splash hit the white stripe of his blue and white short sleeve shirt. 

Peter sucked in his breath, stumbling back, wondering if he should hide or-- _ Holy shit.  _ Was that Tony? Was he stuck as a six-year-old (or was he five? Younger? Older?). Should he interact? He shivered again and resisted the urge to start a round of Collatz Conjecture. 

“Daddy promised me a real toy boat if I made my own, Mama.” Tony said, carefully placing what Peter could now see was a red construction paper boat, a little lopsided, but solid looking enough from Peter’s vantage point. It reminded Peter of the vehicle he had to create for his egg drop project in science last year. He and Ned had won a pizza lunch with Mr. Schatz and spent the whole time watching failed science experiment videos on the smart board. “I want the duckies to have a place to live.”

The boat began to float away from Tony’s tiny outstretched fingers, moving faster and faster over the ripples of the lake. The few ducks that had gathered closer to the edge swam near it, one bopping the cardboard tip with its nose when the two met. 

Tony leapt up, hands thrown back in a cheer before he spun around to his mother. “Mama! It worked! I did it by myself!”

“Lovely job, sweetheart!” Maria said, looking back the way they came with the same hand shading her eyes, a frown forming like an afterthought on her face. 

Dream logic being what it was, the red paper boat bumped the ledge of Peter’s side of the lake, a bit muddier for the journey and wilted on one side. Despite a voice in his head that sounded a bit like Yusuf warning him not to, Peter reached down and picked it up. It collapsed in his hand, a wet, soggy mess. 

Tony and his mother disappeared as if they had just been a mirage but the red paper, which was now ripping in his hand, remained. 

“What the?” He folded the paper and found a line of stick figures--one extra tall with scribbles of black on the head and face labelled Dad, a slightly smaller one with long black U upside down on its head labelled May, another equal size one with a yellow upside down labelled Pepper, humongous circles on long lines that must have been the figures holding hands with the littlest figure, labelled Peter. 

“Pete!”

“Peter?”

“Hey, Spidey, you here?”

Peter turned away from the lake and found his team hiking toward him, various looks of concern and worry on their faces. He blew out a breath and looked down at the paper again but it’s gone, the only evidence of its presence some muddy water on his palm and finger. 

“Dream logic, man.” He rubbed a hand on his jeans and went to meet his team. 

****

Peter ducked under Natasha’s palm as she tried to ruffle his hair, aware that her quick fingers were also checking for bumps and bruises along the way. Rhodey folded his arms in his serious-business stance until Peter assured them that he hadn’t been too damaged by Hammer or the dream. Steve took an inventory of sitrep while they stood around unhelpfully, waiting for something to happen. It was mysteriously calm for the mind of a genius and Peter swore he felt the uneasiness of his spidey-sense acting up--though that could’ve been the same low level thrum of anxiety he’d had since the snap was reversed. 

He’d taken a few steps away from the group, head on a sky that’d gone from a Robin’s eggshell blue to a bruised purple. 

Clint reached out and grabbed Peter's hood. "Kid, jesus, don't wander off. This is Tony Stark's head we're talking about not a playground."

Peter sidestepped the archer’s grip, aware that the man let him go too easily. "Sorry, Clint."

“What’s the plan, Cap?” Clint asked, not taking his eye of Peter who’d found that the ground was too green to be grass. It didn’t look like the grass in the city parks or outside the compound leading up to the woods. Turf, maybe? Or Tony’s mind imagining grass?

That’s when he felt the same old prickle in the back of his neck that felt like he was coming down with the flu and noticed that the grass seemed to be rumbling. 

“We’re going to go nowhere fast if we just stand around.” Nat said, rubbing the back of her neck where it must have been cricked when she was knocked out in the real world. Reality world? Not-dream world. Peter’s head had started to hurt and he could hear a low buzz coming from-

“We have to regroup, find Tony and figure out a way to not play into Hammer’s hands. He knows too much about the dream sharing.” Cap said, stance like he was minutes from a fight and maybe he had a subconscious spidey-sense too because he tensed.

“You hear it, right?” Peter interrupted Rhodey, who was doing figures of how long they had down here as opposed to up there. 

The buzz was louder. His neck hurt like a mother-

“Fucker.” He breathed as giants took shape on the horizon behind the group. 

No one corrected him as the team took in three Iron Giants. Because that’s exactly what they looked like, the metal men from the movie they watched on one of their first team movie nights. When a pillow fight erupted because Tony and Rhodey both teared up and Peter hurt his throat from holding the tears there because he would  _ not  _ cry in front of the Avengers, nope, not even a welled eye. 

“Only Tony would militarize up with those things.” Rhodey sighed. 

“Are we just gonna stand here or should we--you know, run? Fight?”

“Well…” Clint cleared his throat. “Anyone wanna pull some arrows out of their ass and share because Yusuf was wrong. I can’t conjure... summon ...shit-- whatever the hell you want to call it.”

“War Machine is out.” Rhodey squeezed his eyes shut and fluttered his arms like he was hoping the gauntlets would materialize there. They didn’t. 

“Cap, what’s the plan?” Nat said, eyes trained on the ambling giants, hands--usually her only weapons.

“We die in the dream, we wake up, right?” Peter asked.

The ground shook. The sky darkened as one of them blocked out what little sun was left in the dark purple sunset with its head. 

“I’m not willing to test that theory,” Cap said, finally. “Retreat!”

And they did, Peter scrambling back as bits of crushed earth imploded with every step the giants took. It was the stuff of nightmares. Was this one of Tony’s?

They took off into a copse of trees, zig zagging and ducking, the giants turning up grass and dirt and rocks behind them, the debris spraying Peter’s back. 

“Hold up.” Peter nearly ran into Cap’s back but Rhodey steadied him.

“No time, let’s go, Pete!” Clint pivoted and jogged backward, as Natasha slowed yards ahead of them. 

“I have an idea.” Peter closed his eyes for a second and held out his hand like he saw Steve do in the field. 

The  shield connected with his palm so quickly that he had to jerk his body to keep from flying back with the momentum. 

“The fuck?” Clint muttered. 

“Did you just?” Rhodey clapped his hands together in an attempt, Peter was sure, to make his War Machine gauntlets appear. 

On a hunch, Peter closed his eyes again and snapped. The full suit dropped like it had been hovering a foot or two above ground, invisible and waiting to be called up. 

“Peter’s a dream prodigy.” Steve said with a shake of his head, taking the shield from him with the same reverence that a mother might have saved for their newborn. 

“I think---” Peter was cut off as a whistle followed by a sound like a firework burning. 

“DOWN!” Peter was thrown to the ground, head connecting, once and then twice as he slid on rock and mud. Natasha had ran at them just in time before a projectile had shot their way. Peter looked up and sure enough, against the smoke filled surround, one of the Iron Giants had an outstretched arm, forearm compartment opened from where the missile had come from. 

Clint and Rhodey lept and darted apart as a stream of bullets shattered the group, dust and earth exploding at the concussion. 

Cap tugged at Peter but pulled back at the last second and hunched under his shield as another blast was shot. 

Natasha yelled something as Rhodey put on his suit. Peter’s head was pounding but he managed to close his eyes and when he opened them there was Clint’s bow and quiver. The archer leapt behind Steve who blocked another hail of bullets, and took them off the ground, taking up a position in front of Peter as he got an exploding arrow off toward the middle giant, the one who seemed to have the most fire power. 

“Go!” Clint was screaming at him and kicked back. “Get the hell out of here.”

“No! Not without--”

“Peter, go now!” Cap yelled, his tone the kind that Peter learned not to argue with.

None of the shots followed as Peter stumbled and then ran, zig zagging through the clearing. 

The clearing gave way to soft silt and the soft silt gave way to a soft green grass that wasn’t wild like the grass around that lake but carefully manicured, planned, cared after. 

He couldn’t hear the fighting behind him but he could hear every breath he was about to have an asthma attack. His heart beat in his throat and his palms prickled with the adrenaline that he hadn’t spent. 

_ You die, you wake up, right? Nothing can harm you in a dream, right?  _

“Tell that to my head,” he muttered, squeezing the back of his neck where a dull ache had grown from the sharp pain that slamming his head caused.

When he looked up, he noticed two things: 1) There was a museum in front of him. 2) He had lost some time in the dream already from the way the sky had grown darker. 

The museum looked like a ship sailing on a sea of grass, pointed angles made to look like the bow of the ship and from the way the light reflected and hit off the glass, Peter could tell that the sunset had turned into an early light.

He closed his eyes tightly for a second and opened his palm to find sunglasses--the pair he’d stolen from Tony months ago and forgotten to give them back. 

Peter walked around the side of the building, unable to get the maritime comparisons to stop. It looked like it had been abandoned, a ghost vessel, unmoored and drifting without occupants or purpose. 

Peter suddenly wished he was back at the fight. It seemed less creepy than this. 

Peter had spent enough time in rich places with Mr. Stark to appreciate weird architectural choices--like the door that wasn’t really a door on the side of the ship that wasn’t a ship. 

Peter wasn’t sure any eyes not enhanced could see it, the grooves barely visible, like a laser thing scratch against the glass. 

But Aunt May had taught him manners and so he knocked. 

And the door swung open. 

“Of course,” Peter sighed and looked back out to the way he came, where he left his team with Iron Giants in a dream that wasn’t really his dream. 

He stepped inside, pushing his sunglasses up and onto his head as his eyes adjusted to the dark. 

He expected lab lighting, overhead tube lights tracking him as he entered. The light that went from dim to warmly bright made him blink than the fluorescent ones might have. 

He was standing in a foyer. Someone’s house. The boat was not a museum it was a home.

“Mr. Parker?” A British voice said somewhere on Peter’s left. 

An older man in a tweed suit stepped forward with his hands folded behind his back. He looked like a butler. 

“Who’re you?” But he knew. Didn’t he? How many times had Tony spoken about--

“Mr. Parker, I’m Edwin Jarvis. We’ve been expecting you.”


	6. Six

Peter blinked at the man in front of him. “ _The_ Edwin Jarvis.”

“Yes, Mr. Parker.”

“But you’re a person.”

“It would certainly appear that way. However, I am just a figment of Sir’s mind--a security blanket, as he would call it.”

“That sounds like you practiced it a lot.”

“I’ve had to say it to Sir once or twice.”

“You’ve seen him? Where is he? Is he okay?” In the same breath, he said, “You said _we’ve_ been waiting for you--do you mean Tony?”

“Yes. Yes. Debatable. Yes.”

Peter huffed out a laugh. “You are exactly as I imagined.”

“You as well, Mr. Parker.”

“Can I take that as a compliment?”

“I intended it as such.”

“I’m glad you’re here with him. I was worried it would be lonely.”

“It is. But I do believe my presence is helping.”

Peter felt himself worry his bottom lip, a habit that he thought he’d lost sometime before the bite.

“My team--um, I need to get back to them. These Iron Giants attacked them and they couldn’t uh--conjure things like I can. And without Cap’s shield or Clint’s bow, they might get knocked out of the dream and I can’t do this without them.”

“I can assure you that they are still present and unharmed. They’re on the level above.”

Peter looked up. “In here?”

It looked like Mr. Jarvis’ lip quirked. “No, Mr. Parker. In the level of the dreams.”

Peter frowned in confusion. “I never went down a level.”

“You did. When you entered the house.”

“No way. That’s--that’s sick.”

“I do not believe the house is sick, Mr. Parker.”

“No, I mean, that’s cool. Is Mr. Stark on this level?”

“Why do you do that, Mr. Parker?”

“What?”

“You switch between the formal and the informal. Sir would definitely prefer you call him Tony. Why do you use a title?”

“Habit, I guess?”

“Very well. As much as I am enjoying talking to you, Mr. Parker, I must ask that you continue. You have levels to go before you reach Sir.”

“Levels?”

“Yes.”

“Alone?”

“Not exactly. I will assist you as I can. Your team has other important matters to deal with. You will be reunited as soon as possible.”

Peter blew out his breath and retrieved the hand he hadn’t known was in his pocket out, swinging the keychain on his finger. The tiny ARC reactor lit up, his thumb glowing from where he held it there.

“Okay, where to next?”

“I believe you’ll find the hallway illuminating.”

“Were you this cryptic in real life or is that just a dream thing?”

“Good luck, Mr. Parker. I’m here if you need me.”

As he dematerialized, Peter stared up in the ceiling, the wide beams criss crossing above like the ropes on the mast of the ship he likened the house to earlier. He wondered what it would be like to climb them, stare at everything from above and his fingers itched to sling a web and pull himself up, to get some perspective.

But he knew they didn’t have time for that. As much as he felt like he was wondering in a thick fog with nothing but his hands outstretched to guide him, he needed to keep moving. Tony was waiting. And if the situation were reversed, he was sure that his mentor would have found him already and not wasted time.

The thought was all he needed to put the keychain back in his pocket and head in the direction of the hallway, the shadows of it already reaching out into the wide open space, meeting the light  at a sudden angle, dust motes hovering in the air just in sight of the dark. It looked so real.

“I’m a leaf on the wind, watch me soar.” He said because he felt like saying something and while the quote usually was met with groans from Wanda and Tony (who binge watched all of Firefly and Serenity with him in his hospital room as his body was slowly being helped by Doctor Cho and some nanotech to heal faster)  it seemed appropriate, stepping into the unknown and because quoting one of his favorite movies to himself was better than the quiet that he heard around him. Or the fact that he heard every change of his heartbeat as he stepped farther and farther from his new normal.

“Let’s go.” He imagined Lin Manuel Miranda saying in _Hamilton_ ’s Act 1 showstopper, a song that cycled through his playlist while running at the compound or on the subway at school. He wished for his Starkphone more than ever, just to hear the beats and melodies of something so familiar.  

He shook his head quickly and squared his shoulders. He was stalling. He was standing before a harmless hallway, stalling. He stepped forward.

 

***

“Sir, the damper is active.”

Tony couldn’t see Jarvis from where he sat pretzeled on the floor with a holo blue print above him but he could feel the presence behind him.

“How active?”

“I believe Captain Rogers swore loudly, sir.”

Tony barked a laugh and got up slowly, realizing that he didn’t feel any younger here than in reality. “Pony up, Jarvis.”

“We’ve discussed betting, sir.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Tony flicked his right wrist and the projection flipped upside down. It was just as unmanageable now as it had been when he first started.

“How’s Pete?” he asked, trying to stare hard at one section and not back at Jarvis to gauge his reaction.

“He is...worried, sir.”

The same clenching in his chest, the one he remembered first feeling in a bar with Rhodey--the beginnings of a panic attack--flared. “And there are no shortcuts?”

“As we’ve discussed, no. The layers are too fixed to move within them without a foundational breakdown of the top structure.”

“I have a headache, Jarvis. I didn’t think it was possible to get a headache in a dream.”

Tony pushed his fingertips into his forehead, light bloomed in starbursts of color behind his eyes with every press. He wanted Pepper. He wanted the kid. He wanted movie nights in the compound and to yell at Barton for teaching Peter acrobatics in the range so  much that it gave Tony grey hairs.

“Sir, I apologize but I should go back to observe Peter and the rest of the Avengers.”

“Yeah and take the damper off. You can let ‘em roam.”

“Peter is currently on level two. I will keep you updated on his progress.”

“You better.”

When Jarvis was gone, Tony sat back on the floor and set his projection back to rights, and pinching and flaring and twisting his fingers to zoom in and out of various sections. With a practiced finger, he noted what segment was what based on what Jarvis was able to tell him.

This mapping system wasn’t perfect, but it kept what was behind the doors to his lab at bay while he waited.

 

***

 

Peter had played a lot of videogames in the dead of night with Ned-- whispering to each other excitedly while May was asleep and the only noises were errant taxis that were annoyed at being this far off the Cross Island Expressway--to know that hallways this dark and ominous looking didn’t bode well for Player one.

Peter didn’t like the idea of being Player one in this scenario. The shadows seemed to move, taking shape and shifting even as he stood stock still steps away from the mouth, beckoning for him to head back into the light and away from what was ahead.

Illuminating, was the word Jarvis had used. There was nothing illuminating here. It was as pitch black as nights at the compound when they had a blackout drill.

His eyes adjusted as he took another step and another, breathing in deeply as the painful prickle of his spider senses made a migraine from the headache he had felt start a level ago. Doorways stretched down the hallway as far as Peter could see, as if  there were a mirror at the end reflecting the hallway into infinity.

He reached the first doorway, it was out of place for the house--a dark oak much more ornate than the modern furnishings he’d walked through to get here. A foot or two down was another door, this one steel and just as wrong looking as the last.

“Mr. Jarvis? Which door do I choose?”

He reached for the brass handle, an ice cold bulb that sent a shiver up to his neck where it was starting to ache from the constant bristle of his spider senses.  “Ah shit.”

He missed the comfort of his suit. Tony had made a “nap time” version, something he could wear when he wasn’t actively on patrol or with the Avengers. It felt like a weighted blanket and the sensors at the back of his mask, which pulled up from a hood like he was wearing a sweatshirt, kept the ache of any oversensation at bay.

“Mr. Jarvis?” he asked again.

Nothing.

He pulled back from the door and left the steel looking one behind. On his left was another door, this one the same oak as before but a bit lighter. A cardboard sign had been punched into it with screws--TONY’S LAB, KEEP OUT was written in sloppy capitals. Peter recognized his mentor’s handwriting but not the tight letters that usually adorned notes and workshop annotations. This was little Tony’s handwriting.

He snorted and reached for the knob, turning it quickly and pushing it open.

A blast of natural light made Peter recoil from the suddenness of it. “Holy brightness batman!” He shielded his eyes quickly and pulled his sunglasses on his head.

And then he walked inside.

****

 

Peter didn’t know what to expect but the second he stepped over the threshold, the light got darker, murkier, the air thicker.

Something gritty hit him full in his face and he quickly ran the back of his hand over his mouth and cheek, happy for his sunglasses.

“Wait--” he said but it was swallowed by a crash as a huge hunk of twisted rock and metal nearby collapsed. He jumped back and stumbled over another rock and fell on his back, yelling as sharp edges dug into his legs and palms as he caught himself.

 _Titan._ He was on Titan.

He took a gulp of air and another and forced his palms into the rock and grit and shut his eyes.

 _900, 450, 225, 676, 338, 169._ Deep inhale like in the yoga with Nat. _508, 254, 127, 382, 191,_ Exhale. _574, 287._

Stop.

This was a dream.

“Okay, Spiderman? Just a dream.” He hooked a finger around the keychain and pulled it out of his pocket, pressing the button to light it up. Dream.

He didn’t give himself time to think--he just vaulted himself up, pushing off his cut palms and landing on his feet in a move that would have made Clint Barton proud.

Peter dodged a floating piece of debris, ducking under another, his finger pressed to the keychain light the entire time, his finger heating up under the bulb. _Dream dream dream._

_“Mr. Stark?”_

A hundred yards away, beyond more floating debris and craggy Earth, he stumbled into Tony’s arms.

From this angle, it looked all wrong, like he was watching a video online, so far removed and tiny, out of focus and unreal. It wasn’t real. This was a dream. Wasn’t it?

Or a memory?

From his vantage point he could see that he didn’t fall into Tony as much as Tony pulled him close, clinging to Peter as his past self begged to stay, pleading and he remembered, god, he remembered it felt like pins and needles were crawling up his arms and legs, heat hitting his bare legs as the suit began to disintegrate before his body could and then he fell to the ground in Tony’s arms and apologized.

The words were too small for everything he wanted to pack into them. ‘I’m sorry for coming when I shouldn’t have’, ‘I’m sorry for not doing enough’, ‘I’m sorry that I’m leaving you here’.

He watched as Tony collapsed as he turned to dust, failing to hold on to Peter the way Peter had tried desperately to hold onto him.

He couldn’t even think of a number to pull though the collatz conjecture, his eyes were so dry and dusty and he wanted to choke on the air now that he knew where he was and what he was seeing but he couldn’t move.

_Dream. Dream. Dream?_

Tony sat up, brushing off what remained of past Peter, ash and grit swirling around him. Peter recognized the unseeing, empty look on his face then because he had seen it after waking up in the compound medbay. A hollowness that was etched into every worry line on the older man’s face, gone in an instant while Peter figured out knowing how much time had passed, his body on fire and at odds with the phantom aches as it adjusted to being back in existence.

“Tony! I’m right here--I’m--” Peter started running, jumping and sliding and the skidding to a halt as he realized that this was a dream. A nightmare, an echo and that of course Tony couldn’t hear him.

The other woman, Nebula? Said something and Tony looked away from his hands just as Peter backed up as quickly as he could, hands scrambling behind him and pushing, falling, until he connected with the solid of the dream door. But this wasn’t the same wood that the entrance had been--it was a transparent glass and had a groove where Peter slid it open like the sliding glass of a balcony at the compound.

A small landing was the only indication that the darkness below would give way to stairs and not a drop into nothingness. Peter wondered if your mind created pathways into emptiness, where thoughts were stopped before they could fully begin, where nightmares were too awful to continue, and this is what that architecture in the dreamspace looked like.

But his eyes adjusted immediately and he pushed up his sunglasses again to see stairs leading down. When he took a step, a set of tracking lights on the molding lit up, guiding him down a small stairwell.

“Mr. Jarvis?” He called, hand skimming the cinderblock of the wall with every step.

When he hit the bottom, another door, this one looked like it was blasted out of rock, a yellowing plastic sheet too grimy to see through. Peter pushed through it, a sulfur smell hitting the back of his throat so that he coughed.

“That had to be another level, right?” He asked himself, hoping that Jarvis would answer.

Jarvis didn’t answer. But the rumbling from behind him did. The stairwell collapsed, whole sections disintegrating and then falling. Peter turned and ran farther into whatever room awaited him next.


	7. Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay, friends. I was on vacation. Thanks for your comments and kudos and everything in between. Much appreciated. <3

Starks didn’t have good dreams. 

This was true for artificial, somnacin induced ones as well as the normal nightmares that kept him awake so much that FRIDAY gave him a virtual gold star if he slept more than two hours straight.

He never wanted to invite Peter into this mess of memories and nightmares, a place he couldn’t even escape from topside. 

And to  think that all he wanted to do was save the kid from having nightmares. 

Peter was now saving him instead. 

He could feel the moment when one of the levels collapsed. 

“Jay?” He bolted up from stool as the ground beneath him shook. “What’s happening?”

“Mr. Parker has dismantled his first level, sir.” Jarvis stepped out from the door that Tony couldn’t go through. 

“Is he okay?” 

“He is as well as expected, sir.” Jarvis said.

“Can you go back and check on him?” Tony marked on the projection where he thought Peter might be. It was still a zigzag of levels away. 

“He’s in between levels. But I will try.” And in that moment Jarvis looked so real that Tony was looking down at his chest where the arc reactor pulsed with blue light, a leftover from his dream excursion, a trick his mind played on him to convince him he was dreaming, even though he desperately wanted to believe he was awake. 

“I believe you will see him soon.” Jarvis said before turning and walking back the way he came, leaving Tony to a workshop that felt like it was shifting and an inability to do anything to help. 

****

“Steve was asking for you again at the meeting. You can’t keep ignoring his calls, Tony.”

“Not in the mood to talk to Mr. Do Good, Pep.”

“He’s hurting, too. Have you at least gone to see Dr. Sharp?.”

“You gotta understand that I physically cannot go see a Doctor named Sharp.”

“Helen recommended her. She was on SHIELD payroll for years.”

"Another reason why I don’t want anything to do with her.”

“You need more than just time, Tony, you need to talk to someone.”

“I am talking. To you.”

“And to the bottom of that glass.”

“Honey…”

“Seriously, Tony. I think we should go together. I’ve cleared my schedule and I don’t have to meet with the council until Wednesday.”

“The council is a waste. Anyone not focusing on Thanos is a waste.”

“We have to rebuild--”

“There is nothing to rebuild, Pepper. There aren’t even remains to put in graves. There is no closure. And I--” Tony’s voice broke. 

Peter took a small step around the corner and saw Tony holding his head up with his palm, his elbow sliding against the table as Pepper leaned into him, her forehead on his shoulder. 

“I miss him too.”

“I don’t know how to miss him because I don’t know how to acknowledge he’s gone.” Tony’s voice was muffled into his palm. “I just need to wake up, Pep.”

Pepper took Tony’s head in her hands and kissed his forehead. He leaned into her and Peter backed away. 

He hated this. He needed to get out of here. 

He spun and ran down the hallway, pushing open the last doorway and running straight into a tall figure who caught him by the shoulders. 

“Steady, Mr. Parker.”

“Mr. Jarvis? What the hell? Where’ve you been?”

“I apologize for the delay, Mr. Parker. But we must go. This level is about to collapse.” 

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.” Mr. Jarvis said and the two stepped farther into the room, the door behind slamming shut. 

 

****

Peter was unprepared for the crush of bodies that swallowed him. He was hit by an elbow, a large shoulder bag, the flap of a long winter coat pulled too close too quick. 

A light drizzle was louder than the murmuring buzz around him, a low hum of background noise as he blinked and tried to focus, hoping that a clearer vision would allow for a better ability to listen.   

As the crowd swelled he was pushed to the back of the crowd, a sidewalk where two bored looking police officers leaned against a street sign, one of their radios crackling with, “Stark’s ready.”

The man hacked and spat on the ground and everything--the background noise, the rain, the far off blaring horns and shouts of passerby blocks over--snapped into focus.

On the steps of the Queens town hall, stepping clear of an intern’s shaky grip on an umbrella, Tony appeared stone faced and solemn. Peter spotted at least two dozen new cameras, iPhones and StarkPhones and all devices in between held aloft to capture Iron Man himself in public, in Queens no less. What was Tony Stark doing in Queens? And how had Peter missed this?

There was no way to tell the exact day or time of this appearance except that in the reflection of the opaque doors behind Tony, festive holiday lights twinkled from the window display across the way. Was it a December ago? Two? Peter didn’t recognize it.

In the early days of his Spider Manning, he’d poured over any and all press conferences that Tony or the Avengers held court. And then after Germany he watched with the obsession of a football coach preparing for a big game--ready for some mention of him or some indication that Tony would acknowledge his work. 

None came. And now he understood why, was grateful for it even. 

And this, this was unlike the press conferences he’d seen in the past. There was no easy Stark charm, no banter with his favorite (or least favorite) reporters before the actual conference began. Rhodey wasn’t standing off to the side with Pepper ready to intervene if needed. 

Peter caught his thumb in between his front teeth, worrying the nail down so that he bit the skin too hard. 

Tony stepped up to the mike with slowness of a man delivering bad news. This wasn’t even damage control, it was past that, it was when the damage had laid waste and there was nothing left to say but empty words. Tony had made one small appearance after Germany that this reminded him of--to let the people know that War Machine was recovering, that Captain America was at large and that he would do everything in his power to fix it.

Tony cleared his throat and started to speak, his voice devoured by the feedback of the microphone. The crowd winced and groaned. 

“Sorry--I…” Tony stepped back from the microphone and Peter’s waited, eyes moving from Tony to the distracting blur of raindrops and lights in glass behind. 

“Where’s Spiderman?” A shout from the back hit Tony like a projectile so that he flinched--a quick jerky movement that might’ve looked like nothing to the audience but was fully noticeable to Peter, who’d spent months watching Tony’s facial expressions for hints of approval or pride or anything at all. 

Peter held his breath as Tony’s face turned ashen like a flipbook of shock, quickly moving toward ghostly white to grey. 

“Bring out Spiderman!” A kid, about Peter’s age, yelled from the top of a barricade to the left. A police officer idling to the side, ambled over to pull him down. 

More shouts and jeers--this was not the reception Peter was used to from a crowd when Tony Stark was around. 

“Spiderman! Spiderman! Spiderman!” The chant began from a few stray voices among the crowd and then picked up momentum. 

Peter moved through the crowd again and hands were grabbing at him, his hood, his sleeves. He shook them off and made his way up to the steps as Tony struggled in front of a crowd for maybe the first time in his life. 

“Spiderman was an Avenger.” Tony rubbed at his forehead with his fingers, pressing so hard that the tips were white. “Not many people know that.”

“He cared about Queens...a lot. That’s why I’m here. He--” Tony stopped, eyes wandering the crowd. “He would want me to be here.”

From his new vantage point, three steps above street level, Peter found it easier to stare at the lights across the street than at Tony. It was easier to trace the haphazard way the icicle shaped lights were hung in the window, as if the salespeople had last minute hopes to make a festive go of it and gave up halfway through. 

This couldn’t be a memory. Tony never mentioned giving a speech in Queens, he never confessed in his usual self-deprecating way in his workshop about how he couldn’t follow a statement without stumbling. 

This had to be a nightmare, like the ones Peter’d had where he was wearing his Spider suit during a Decathlon meet, the crowd full of the faces of everyone he would disappoint if he screwed up so majorly. 

“Spiderman deserved better. And I’m going to make sure that Queens is protected so you don’t feel alone.”

“Is it your fault?” a woman asked, to the side of the stage and close enough that she didn’t have to shout. She had bright pink hair and pressed her lips into such a severe tight line that her skinny brown cheeks caved. 

Tony looked like he might be sick. Peter couldn’t stand it any longer, he pivoted and raced to the doors in front and pushed open, not knowing what was waiting but hoping it was far from whatever quiet terror this was. 

 

****

“Jarvis?” Tony asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Where’s the team?”

“Currently dismantling another level, sir.”

“Oh, good. How far above?”

“Four levels.”

“And Peter?”

“Two levels and one adjacent.”

Tony walked around his projection, hand cupping his chin as he took in the whole thing. “Dreams are funny bastards, aren’t they?”

“I would say so, sir.”

“Dream architecture more so.Bastard was right about mazes. Just didn’t say I could get caught in one of my own making.”

“If memory serves, Mr. Charles  _ did  _ give you particularly prudent advice when it came to dream architecture and-”

“Yeah, yeah, I don’t want to hear it.” Tony waved a dismissive hand and made a chomping gesture with his other hand, shrinking the projection to a smaller globe size, a 3-D image of the maze. An arc reactor. The path to his dreams formed an arc reactor. How on brand. 

“I want to see him, Jarvis.”

“I know, sir.”

Just then, a huge chunk of the workshop plummeted to the ground near Tony’s feet. He jumped back and shielded himself. Gauntlets flew from their various nooks and crannies and attached themselves to his hands and arms like the Mark 42, ready to defend against the threat. 

“It is the dream collapsing.”

Tony stared down at his suit clad hands. It’s funny how he took a step back in time in this dream world, a place where he could make anything appear within the parameters of this room, anything except the tools to free himself. 

He shook his hands, freeing himself of the gauntlets with a motion similar to waking up limbs that had fallen asleep. “Okay, okay.” He surveyed the room and his eyes wandered from his projection, a pulsing red X marking his spot and the blue dots of his team. And the red dot of Peter, just a level or two above, depending on which path he took. 

“How is he moving between levels?”

“Doors, sir. Some stairs.”

“Huh.” Tony crossed the workshop with a few long strides and wrenched the door open. The workshop around him seemed to shudder as if he were in an earthquake, as if this really was the basement of his Malibu home, as if it were solid ground and not subconscious architecture. 

“Sir, are you sure that is a good idea?” Jarvis asked, with the same amount of cautious disapproval that Tony spent his childhood ignoring. 

“It’s time. I’m taking my chances on the other side.”

“I don’t know if I can follow, sir.”

Tony stared at the open door, the threshold beyond nothing but a darkness that could be called murky. The feeling of such desolation and panic reared up again like every time Tony had opened the door in the past. 

“Just keep an eye on Peter.”

And he stepped through. 


End file.
